With a production of Marin Marais’s 1706 opera Alcione conducted by Jordi Savall, the historic house where Bizet’s Carmen and Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande had their premieres is back with all its Belle Époque splendor renewed. Among the restorers’ proudest achievements is recreating the auditorium’s unique shade of red, somewhere between coral and brick. (slide show with text in French; Google Translate version here)
Category: music
Composer: What I Learned About What Opera Companies Want When They Commission Work
In the autumn of 2015, I reached out to roughly 200 small- to medium-sized American opera companies. In a 100-word email, I introduced myself and asked for a five-to-ten-minute phone conversation about trends in the commissioning and production of new opera (a subject that obviously interested me but was benign enough for an initial discussion). I received about 40 responses and eventually spoke with representatives of around 20 companies. My lone question was: “What conditions would need to be in place for your company to consider commissioning a new work, or producing a recently composed work?”
Al Roker Tells The Entire Internet He Fell Asleep At The Met, And The Opera Crowd Comes After Him
The preternaturally cheerful weatherman for NBC’s Today Show posted to Instagram a photo of him napping during intermission at Der Rosenkavalier and confessed that he’d dozed during the performance as well. (Hey, the guy gets up at 4 a.m. every workday.) “Some opera fans and singers … saw it as a public slap in the face. Quite a few took to Instagram to criticize Mr. Roker for what they saw as rudeness.” (One soprano on the Met’s roster was downright vicious.)
Washington National Opera’s Executive Director Steps Down
“[Michael] Mael took over his current role at WNO in 2011 after three years as chief financial and chief operating officer with the company. A calm and affable presence in a turbulent field, he presided over a return to stability after the Kennedy Center, in 2011, took over the company, which appeared headed for bankruptcy. For the past four seasons, WNO has boasted balanced budgets, after a long history of losses.”
Patricia Racette Moves Into Stage Directing
Long admired for her acting abilities, the soprano will direct her first opera production, of La traviata, at Opera Theatre of St. Louis in May 2018.
Concerts On Demand – We Come To You
Sofar Sounds, named for “Songs From a Room,” is a for-profit company that hosts live music performances in 340 cities worldwide. Founded in London in 2009 by three friends who were sick of the loud, disrespectful audiences at bars and rock clubs — this origin story is recounted before every show — Sofar now has a full-time staff of at least 50, investors like Virgin’s Richard Branson, and a team of unpaid volunteer “ambassadors” in every Sofar city. The company has grown quickly over the past eight years, largely by marketing itself as a grassroots movement for and by like-minded music lovers. Its motto is “Bringing the magic back to live music.”
Maestros Of Content Management: A Tech Magazine Gushes Over The NY Phil’s Digitized Archives
“Its archivists are changing the way people engage with the orchestra in the present, not only providing musicians, scholars, researchers, journalists, and fans dynamic access to a living, breathing entity, but also unparalleled, granular insight into the classical repertoire itself. That deepens the orchestra’s engagement with the public until it becomes a symphony of rich data: CDOs take note.”
Fyre Festival Was Guaranteed To Be A Disaster, Writes Someone Who Worked For It
Chloe Gordon: “Festival vendors weren’t in place, no stage had been rented, transportation had not been arranged. Frankly, we were standing on an empty gravel pit and no one had any idea how we were going to build a festival village from scratch.”
Why Are Classical Musicians Wasting Their Time Trying To Be Relevant? (A Screed)
“To listen to and to play or sing Western art music is now a counter-cultural act. It is an act of profound rebellion against our politically correct Cultural Marxist zeitgeist as well as being a source of pleasure, moral and spiritual improvement, and enhanced appreciation of the connection between the human and the divine. Let us not be afraid to relegate pop music to its proper place, to embrace our Western art music heritage and to resolve to make it a central part of our lives as educated men and women.”
The Science Of Seating Musicians In The Orchestra
Let’s start with Papa: “Much classical music involves antiphony, which we could describe as a conversational style of writing in which the first and second violins trade phrases with each other — an 18th century stereo effect. Haydn organizes his orchestra with the first and second violins opposite each other so that these phrases could be heard coming from opposite sides of the stage.”